Co-Founder’s message

The tragic events in Gaza in the last quarter of 2023 blurred the entire year’s memory in our collective minds. It felt as though much of what we accomplished faded in the collective trauma we experienced watching our students, their families, and extended community in Gaza experience unspeakable devastation and displacement. Having been in touch daily with most of our students in Gaza, I felt overwhelmed, helpless, angry, and stunted; yet, how insignificant are my feelings compared to what our young students in Gaza continue to experience. The unfolding tragedy resulted in our Syrian students revisiting their own lingering trauma—wreaking havoc on their ability to proceed with their own studies, internships, and volunteer efforts to help their Palestinian peers.

When my cofounder and I established the VIP.fund, we envisioned a “sandbox” where students join to learn by doing. Our platforms are built and managed by our students. Our programs are designed and run by our students. This approach allows students impacted by conflict to collaborate with a global community of their peers and volunteers in building team skills. They learn by doing, acquiring digital skills to co-create online, effective communication skills that are necessary in today’s digital world, and tomorrow’s AI future. This approach has been an asset for our students, who graduate with work experience, and seamlessly integrate into global tech-driven organizations.

As you read on, keep in mind that these efforts are by students and for students. Students in refugee camps built our digital platforms, ran webinar series, and nurtured work opportunities with Silicon Valley-based AI companies and VCs. With the exception of a few dedicated volunteers, our students’ collective efforts made all this happen. And while you contemplate that, hold space in your heart for our students in Gaza, who worked diligently to keep our operations going the first three quarters of the year. We pray for their safety and look forward to supporting their journeys in the year ahead.

What We Do

Funding – edSeed

• Students with active edSeed campaigns supported incoming students in every phase of the fundraising process.
• Project Turquoise fund wrapped up after supporting a total of 5 students from Zaatari camp (3 females/2 males) for the past 5 years. We are grateful for their efforts.
• Kicked off a technical revamp of our platform to improve the student and volunteer experiences.
• Established new relationships with Souriyat Across Borders/SAB, (HQ UK), and DSFG /German-Syrian Research Society (Deutsch-Syrische Forschungsstiftung e.V.) HQ Dresden Germany educational organizations in Europe, Middle East (name them, include section for partners with logos and links to their websites).

Seed Funds

Like other crowdfunding platforms, edSeed enables individuals to campaign and receive funds; however, edSeed also offers orientation and training on how students can present themselves and campaign effectively. Success is driven by the student’s ability to reach a network and raise the first 10-20% of the donations before the campaign launch. This initial amount is critical to the success of any campaign.

Our seed funds provide the initial capital and often go further to sponsor an entire campaign. Seed funds are established and managed by individuals and organizations who care about education and conflict-impacted youth.

Since 2018, these endowments have collectively raised $310,006 and we currently have 9 established, targeted seed funds.

Education

• Our webinars centered on four themes addressing students’ mental well-being, practical needs and building skills for the AI & digital world ahead of them: 
• Technology & AI
• Digital communication 
• Migration and mapping a future
• Psychology & healing
• Engaged professionals from our community to deliver Arabic presentations with a greater focus on AI, data science, and software as services in the technology realm. These webinars enlightened students as to how AI will play a role in their future,  invited them to consider career paths, and created opportunities for internships with our speakers’ organizations. 
• Complemented the tech series with digital storytelling, content creation, and culture preservation through photography, and podcast creation, strengthening our students’ communications skills. Students used these skills to build our social media presence, promote their campaigns, and collaborate on a podcast series pilot. 
• Hosted alumni who spoke about life post-graduation, challenges and opportunities of their migration journeys, and mapping a future. We hosted an immigration webinar to enlighten students on legal immigration frameworks.
• Held space for a series on forgetfulness and other webinars on digital psychology platforms and healing from trauma.

Impact

Work 

We expanded the “Work for Education” program, designed to create internship opportunities for students with companies offering digital engagement programs. Students worked on AI data-annotation projects, Venture Capital operations and deal assessments, grant applications for an audio book publishing platform, and more. 

“Over the past 18 months, our collaboration with VIP.fund has been outstanding. Their dedication, adaptability, and communication make them a top choice for accurate data annotation services. We highly recommend working with VIP.fund and its fellows for exceptional results.” – aiXplain Team

Student Led Projects

Four students collaborated on launching a podcast series titled  “adha w idood.” The series narrates the rich and diverse lives of students in Gaza, Lebanon and elsewhere. The team was led by Ahmed Al-Yacoubi, a computer engineering student from Gaza.

Student Led Startups

Community 

As our community grows, so does our presence in countries across the world. Students, donors, and volunteers connect with each other when visiting different countries. Below are photos from France, Japan, Jordan, Lebanon and Germany, and a table showing where our students are across the world.

Student Global Presence

Program Highlights

Operations

Our community of students and volunteers collaborate across 5 time zones. To do this effectively, they rely heavily on SLACK, a communications tool that is home to 348 members, 34 communication channels and a busy Zoom call schedule.  

On a weekly “all hands” call, students and volunteers share updates and receive guidance from board members and advisors. Students and supporting volunteers conduct weekly meetings to address communications, IT, accounting and student onboarding. They use other tools to design and publish social media posts, update our proprietary systems and maintain program content on google docs. All this is communicated in two languages: Arabic and English.

We are grateful for the dedication of our board members. Their commitment to the organization and the time and effort spent volunteering with students and partners is key to our success.

A special thanks to Marguerita, who volunteered to help students launch their edSeed campaigns.

We are grateful for the team who supported the VIP.fund and edSeed operations throughout 2023. Both Yusra and Bashar were edSeed scholars who showed tremendous dedication to helping others in the community.

Our “sandbox” model relies on the students’ commitment to engage, learn, and support others. Students featured below volunteered to run our programs from A to Z. They lead our technology platform support, communications, brand management, and webinar series management. We are grateful for their participation.

Financials

Thank you for investing in quality education for all. We can’t do this work without you.